


Creation

by ashinan



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Tony-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-13
Updated: 2012-04-13
Packaged: 2017-11-03 14:28:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/382334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashinan/pseuds/ashinan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony creates his first robot when he’s five and a half.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creation

**Author's Note:**

> ...I have been writing SO MUCH. I'm sorry.

Tony creates his first robot when he’s five and a half. He does it for his mom, a small robotic dog that stalls on every third step and has a high pitched whine when it shuffles along the floor. It’s programmed to recognize his mom’s voice, to listen to her commands and keep her company. He names it Dog, because he’s always wanted one and his mom has always reluctantly told him no.

When he presents it to her, he can see the tears in her eyes. He can see the joy in the lines around her mouth. He can see the tremble in her hands. For the first time, his mother looks ridiculously proud of him, her hand settling in his hair. Warmth floods through him and he wants to show off, wants to get her to crack a small smile, like she does whenever his father isn’t drinking. Tony gestures at it and Dog lets out a high pitched bark, the exact replication of a Pomeranian and his mother laughs. It’s such a rare sound that Tony stares at her.

And then Dog is knocked to the floor, its right foreleg shattering on impact. Tony stares in surprise and his mother gives a soft breath of shock, and Howard stands over them both, eyebrow raised and whiskey in his hand.

“This wasn’t what I told you to build, Tony. Get back to it,” he says, and Tony watches him leave.

His mother helps him clean up Dog, but Dog won’t work anymore. It won’t bark, it won’t move, and Tony doesn’t know how to fix it. He’s too afraid to ask his father, so Dog stays on his desk, a broken relic of something Tony did wrong.

His second robot is his father’s design. He doesn’t name it.

His third and fourth robot he calls Thing One and Thing Two after his love of Doctor Seuss. They’re made from broken radio parts and a dismantled television set and two race cars he never bothered using. They stay in his room, cleaning up the random bolts that litter his floor and tuck away his Captain America and Red Skull dolls. They recognize Tony’s footsteps and know when to hide if they hear Howard’s. Tony loves them with a ferocity that is only rivaled by his love for Captain America. He doesn’t show anyone them. He doesn’t let his father know.

But after a year knowing Peggy, he shows her.

The delight on her face reminds him of his mother, of the shine he saw in her eyes when he had presented Dog to her. Tony decides, the night Peggy is about to leave on what amounts to her final mission, to give her Thing Two, telling her it will recognize her voice and do as she asks. She thanks him with a kiss on the forehead and a hug that squeezes the breath from him.

Four months later, Tony finds it amongst her things that SHIELD had brought to his father when she died. Thing Two is beyond repair and he throws Thing One against the wall so hard it shatters. The pieces litter the floor like the bolts Thing One had just cleaned up and Tony stares at it, tears blurring the circuitry. He can’t breathe past the pain. He can’t breathe past the failure. Captain America stares up from his pillow, and he wants to throw him too. Instead, he collects both Thing One and Thing Two and they join Dog as relics. He can’t do anything right.

He stops naming the robots. He creates them because he’s asked, because they are to be used as tools. He creates them because his father beats him if he doesn’t and because his mother will smile if he does. He creates them and never lets them be named, the constant presence of Dog and Thing One and Two a reminder that never leaves him.

He’s accepted into MIT at fifteen, and his professors scoff at his creations. They complement his circuitry, his use of numerical sequences, and his ability to conform to their qualifications. But they see no depth, they see no  _creativity_. What is the purpose?

There is none.

For his final exam at MIT, Tony decides to teach the fuckers that he can create a robot that has  _feeling_. He can create one that has creativity. He stays up for three days and three nights hammering out the details, streaming lines of code over and over until all the numbers line up with the ones whispering in his head. He perfects the AI system, perfects the simplicity of the program, and then tweaks it so it’ll show up the professors when they ask for a demonstration.

He sleeps for eighteen hours once he’s done the code work, and then up for another three days molding metal and cutting his fingers, scalding his palms, and smearing blood and sweat over the framework. He implements the coding, slams on the last piece, and he’s  _done._

He doesn’t name this one either, but that’s okay. He’s used to it.

And then the worst happens. He doesn’t even get to sleep before Obidiah is pulling up to MIT, black cars surrounding him, and suits upon suits following him into the building. He gets to Tony just as Tony finishes up the final touches, making sure the metal fingers can actually write out his name. Obidiah throws open the door and the sun that bleeds into the room is a lie.

There are no words at first, Obi staring at Tony and Tony staring back, and then Obi opens his mouth, says the phrase, “They’re dead” like it’s all so simple, like it didn’t just shatter Tony’s entire world, didn’t just break apart his psyche like an egg that’s been brought down too hard. Obi pats him on the shoulder, ruffles his hair and says, “See you at the funeral” and he’s gone, just like that, leaving Tony alone in his workshop with nothing,  _nothing_.

The numbers grey around the corners and suddenly he’s screaming, a noise that doesn’t even register until he’s slammed his fist into the table in front of him. The whisper of machines and the clamour of equations is unbearable, a beat in his skull he can’t understand. His parents are dead.  _Dead_. His father is gone. His mother – oh god,  _his mother_. A sob catches and holds in his throat, threatening to suffocate him. He can’t breathe past the pain, can’t move any further then the table that barely holds him up. His fist bleeds out red against the metal and he can taste it on his tongue like a constant.

There’s a beep behind him and he realizes his robot has completed the tests. His robot, that he didn’t name because it wasn’t worth it. His robot, another failure that he has to chalk up to just being Tony fucking Stark. He turns to it, screams at the unfairness of it all, and goes to town. He punches and kicks, shoves and stomps, until the exterior skeleton is dented and painted with his blood, his sweat, his  _pain_. He breaks off one of the fingers, loosens the wires, drags it upright just so he can shove it down again. And then he stops because all that stands before him, painted with his savage agony, is a silent portrait of his inability to gain his father’s approval. A hollowed feeling settles in his chest, over his heart like liquid metal, and he can breathe again. It’s sharp; painful bursts that catch and trip over his tongue on the way out. He turns away, pressing his hands against his eyes, red bleeding over to black, and a dry sob leaves him. He can’t. He  _can’t_.

And then a soft beep, a gentle bump against his side, two damaged metallic fingers curling into the worn fabric of his shirt.

His robot stands before him, dented and damaged and broken and  _alive_ , and beeps at him again, a long whistling sound that catches in his ear like an alarm.  It bumps against Tony’s shirt, its damaged wheels squeaking as it cuddles close, in what Tony can only assume is a try at comfort. He wipes at the tears on his cheeks, staring down at this strange turn of events, at this metallic creature he had created just to spite the professors at MIT, and starts laughing.

“You’re such a dummy.”

And so Tony names his robot this time.

As he continues on, as he creates Butterfingers and You and Jarvis, as he creates more and more until eventually all that he’s created is thrust back in his face by a simple metallic hole in his chest, he re-evaluates his choices. He looks at Dummy, holding a magnifying glass in the wrong place as he tugs out the latest bullets in Iron Man’s armour, looks at You who is playing a complicated game of Tic-Tac-Toe with Butterfingers, looks at Jarvis’ red eye against the wall, and he feels a strange sense of calm. These are not failures. These are not reminders of what he can’t do but what he  _can_.

His robots, his creations, are his family. And he just needs to remember that. 


End file.
